Free With Love from Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #2) by Ruth Glover

should be so frankly and ruthlessly exposed. His skin problem, endured by many young people his age, was a constant source of concern to his mother. He would have been happy to forget it; one glance in the mirror in the morning as he combed his hair, and the youthful ailment could be ignored for the remainder of the day.
    Dudley was an only child. He often wished for a brother or sister, if only to keep his mother’s attention focused somewhere else once in a while! Now he poured himself some milk, missing the glass and slopping a few drops. About to swipe at it with his cuff, he caught his mother’s reproachful eye. She laid the paper aside with another sigh, reached for a dish towel, and mopped up the small mess. At the same time Henley, Della’shusband and Dudley’s father, closed the kitchen door behind him, set down a pail of milk, took off his hat, and grinned at the familiar scene—Dudley spilling something, Della wiping it up.
    “Boys will be boys, eh?” he said with good humor.
    At least he hadn’t said huh . Nevertheless, “Like father, like son,” Della reminded.
    As Dudley moved on to his third piece of toast and a second serving of fried eggs, Henley bent over the washstand located in the corner of a room that was the main living quarters for this family of three. Another section of the log house was divided into two small bedrooms. Home life, for homesteaders who braved the hazards of the primitive bush, was necessarily close quarters. For eight or nine months of the year, heat was a problem to be reckoned with, and large areas were hard to keep warm. Freezing to death was as threatening as starvation. More than one loner had been found frozen in his own bed, having been too sick or disoriented to keep his fire going, gradually falling asleep and never waking.
    Della laid the paper aside, obviously not finished with it or her thought, poured her husband a mug of coffee, brought another plate of eggs and toast from the range’s warming oven, and resumed her place.
    Henley took a seat at the round, oak table. His dark hair was touched at the temples with gray, his warm eyes were surrounded by what people called “laugh lines.” Henley was a good-natured, good-looking man.
    Henley Baldwin had a loving heart, a faithful heart, never wavering in kindness toward his choice of a wife—Della of the sharp tongue and quick temper. On those rare occasions when Della’s conscience was pricked by her unreasonableness and she sought absolution, Henley would say, kindly, “Why, hon, you keep a man on his toes, that’s all. I’d probably be a poor stick of a fellow without you.” Nevertheless, to all and sundry who knew the couple and often felt sorry for the long-suffering husband, Henley deserved better.
    “I was just saying that this,” and she tapped the paper with her finger, “may be the answer to Dudley’s problem.”
    Like his son before him, Henley was puzzled. Surely she didn’t know about the smoking . . . but you never could tell about Della. She knew how to keep things to herself until the strategic moment when her triumph would be complete and the errant person proved guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. In all such matters, one thing was as sure and as certain as winter—Della would, sooner or later, face the guilty party head-on.
    Like his son before him, Henley prompted, “his problem?”
    “Henley,” she said impatiently, “his pimples, of course.” And the eyes of both parents turned on the pinking face of their son. Mouth full of breakfast, Dudley stopped chewing momentarily and looked guiltily at his parents as though sorry to have brought this problem upon them. Della studied the young face critically; Henley more casually. It was a thin face, unformed now, with only a promise of what the man would look like. Lank brown hair fell over a high forehead; the teeth, at this age, appeared too large for the narrow face; a faint fuzz sprouted from the long upper lip; and—yes